Myself, the Imposter.
Credit Unknown
Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. – Wikipedia
I think, just to start having the conversation, is the first step in finding a way out. I’m not a mental health professional, but I have a small voice and that’s kind of why I’m here, and why I started this blog. Hopefully my journey can help you, inspire you, or re-direct you. If I’m given a soapbox I can’t just stand on it and pander my wares, I need to find other ways to support my community, so as best as I can tell… that should start with my own experiences.
I’m Chris and among all of the other things that drive me on a daily basis, I consistently feel like an imposter. At almost 39 years old I finally found my way back to my love of comics and illustration. I started Band of Bards with Tim as an idea five years ago, hit some related road blocks… but found my footing this past March during a world-wide pandemic.
To understand my story we need to start at the point where I can most earnestly recollect the hopelessness.
Comics, and animation… these have been cornerstones of my life for as long as I can remember. I would sit in the den room at my parent’s house as a kid drawing keyframes from Disney movies like The Lion King– pausing our household VHS player at exactly the right moment. I practiced for hours and hours everyday referencing the pages of Spawn, or X-Men to learn expressive posing and extreme anatomy. When you’d ask: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, my answer was always a Disney Animator. As a kid I obsessed over it, and as a teenager preparing to choose where I would go to college, I made it a point to follow that dream. Edinboro University of Pennsylvania was my obvious choice. Their art program is robust, and the alumni list is vast with talent.
My motivation was there, but what went wrong?
It wasn’t any singular incident. I think, when I look back, it was two semesters worth of mental abuse. Diatribes and rants thrown at a kid, who for all intents and purposes was trying to follow their dreams, and still very much impressionable at only seventeen.
I slogged my way across campus daily for class with a professor who was courted to me as a “Master of their craft”, only to be disappointed, and frankly destroyed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to drag them. I’m also not here to whine about it. I understand full-well that teaching requires tough love, and very specific personality types. Two years worth of this instructors classes though, was definitely the ignition point of my own mental struggles. I vividly remember one of the last in class workshops where I was singled-out repeatedly for my love of comics. The instructor stood at the front of the class and asked us to “Draw something terrible”.
Draw something terrible. I didn’t give it much thought and I sat myself down next to a plain white power outlet in the wall and started sketching. I remember seeing them notice me from across the room with a peaked interest. They stopped what they were doing purposely to rattle my cage. As they approached I remember the first remark, “Start over, that isn’t terrible.”– I had hardly begun. Then I was hit with it, and it felt like a brick, “Draw some of your shitty comic book characters.”
In that small and worthless second in time, the entire direction of my life changed.